Everyone agrees that social media should be more heavily regulated to protect young people. Everyone is wrong. It should be less regulated to protect young people. Regulation provides a semblance of safety, an illusion of safety. It is better to admit that there is no possibility of safety here.
Imagine a dangerous cliff path, from which a couple of children have fallen to their deaths. It would be wrong of the council to make it a bit safer by providing lighting. That would encourage people to go there. The safest thing would be to keep it fully dangerous.
Because social media platforms ban nudity and extreme violence, parents drift into assuming that they are safe enough. But what, in this case, does safety mean? The chance of a direct harm befalling a child is small. Thankfully only very few children are groomed by paedophiles or seduced into suicide.
Participation in adult culture corrupts young souls
When we talk about protecting children, we have to talk in more old-fashioned terms about protecting their innocence. For this we have to make a distinction between consuming culture and participating in it.
It is not ideal for a 12-year-old to watch some adult films, but it is not really avoidable; children cannot be entirely sealed off from the adult world. In a sense it is good if they are gradually exposed to its horrors. Social media is entirely different. The 12-year-old who posts on social media is participating in adult culture. He or she is potentially communicating with millions of adult strangers. He or she is receiving ‘likes’ from them.
To some people the next sentence will sound Victorian, but they are living in the past. Such participation in adult culture corrupts young souls. Seeking to attract ‘likes’ from strangers is obviously bad for a child’s character. It makes them vain and self-centred. This is also the case for adults, but they should probably be free to seek affirmation in this way.
It is good that children will from spring next year be banned by the government from using social media. Even if it is virtually impossible to enforce, it is a good signal of public morality. We must create a firm taboo; we must shame those parents who drag their feet. But we should be clearer about the nature of the harm: letting children participate in adult culture is child abuse.
